Stef's Blog - a native London Southlander and unrepentant 'Conspiraloon™' who doesn't trust anyone, not even himself. Sometimes I take pictures. I also enjoy swearing immensely and think much faster than I can type, so each post comes guaranteed to include at last one confusing typo. OK?

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Sunni Delight pt2

During the Vietnam War the American military swore blind that it would triumph in South Vietnam if only supplies of men and material from North Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail were stopped. The only problem was that much of the trail lay in neighbouring Laos. No matter, the US bombed the crap out of Laos and destabilised its government. The US also bombed the crap out of Cambodia and destabilised its government as well for similar reasons; killing half a million people in the process.

At this point it is only fair to point out that the Americans still lost the Vietnam War.

For rather obvious reasons, seeking to win a war in one country by attacking neighbouring countries is rarely a good idea. President Truman understood that when he turned down MacArthur’s requests to nuke China with 50 A bombs during the Korean War, the Israelis didn’t when they rolled into Lebanon.

Last week the British media was filled with stories about how the Iranians were supplying Iraqi insurgents with high tech bombs that have been used to kill British soldiers. The initial stories came from unnamed sources but were eventually confirmed by Tony Blair and our foreign secretary. Whilst careful not to explicitly identify the Iranian government as being the source of the bombs they did lecture the Iranians on failing to maintain adequate border security. Which was a bit rich given that there are two sides to every border. And even richer when you consider, for example, that since occupation by British and American forces heroin exports from Afghanistan have risen forty-fold. Come to think of it, we can’t even keep the channel tunnel secure from mental patients in flip-flops.

That the officer responsible for investigating the case of the two SAS men caught dressed as Arabs in Basra died this weekend "not due to hostile action and also not due to natural causes". The most entertaining suggested explanation for his apparent suicide so far was this one reported by the BBC "It's pretty tough for them and it's not very comfortable doing the kind of work they have to do, particularly in the kind of heat we have seen this year". Coincidentally, at the same time his death was announced the newspapers explained that the two SAS guys dressed as Arabs ‘had been spying on a senior police commander who was allegedly torturing prisoners with an electric drill’. Yes, of course, driving around in a car armed with two assault rifles, a heavy machine gun, grenades, a rocket launcher and possibly explosives, then firing at the local police when challenged is precisely how an undercover surveillance team would behave. I really, really believe that one.

Plus all sorts of stories reported by the Arab-speaking press of bomb-toting Americans being caught dressed as Arabs and several Iraqis being rather put out at finding bombs underneath their cars attached to mobile phones.

And while I’m jotting down stories from my Iraqi ‘You couldn’t make it up collection’ how about this one about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the dozen or so ‘Al Qaeda No.2’s’ out there, sending a letter in which he says hello to himself. A letter verified as genuine by the US Director of National Intelligence. Marvellous. Isn’t it a pisser writing letters in a second language?

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